Gender: A Useful Category in the Analysis of Ego-Documents?

The article discusses the significance of the concept of gender for historical analysis, particularly on the basis of the importance of different types of ego-documents for the self-expression of the sexes. Attention is focused mainly on the status of autobiographies as a historical source, with some consideration of other types of life writing. It is shown how the form of this genre affects the sexes’ access to self-expression and how their differing ‘cultural space’ opens up opportunities for people's self-creation. The development is viewed in an international light, with reference to both ego-documents and history in general, and it is shown how sources of this kind and women's perspectives are necessary preconditions for the humanities to be able to achieve an important reinterpretation of older historical arguments. Each can provide scholars with opportunities to investigate material that has previously defied their analysis.     

Integrating the Strands of Victorian Diversity

This roundtable article provides responses to the other contributions, emphasizing the need for connecting various research strands in Victorian Studies, and considering international aspects. The essay ends with a proposal to take inspiration from the method of microhistorical morphology, forcing the scholar to consider many different contexts.     

THE SWEDISH CONSULAR SERVICE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE, 1720–18151

This paper deals with the origins and functions of the Swedish consular service in Southern Europe between 1720 and 1815. It is argued that establishment of the consular service was a necessary part of the Swedish policy of trade expansion. Consuls acted partly as commission agents of Swedish merchant and shipowners, because Sweden lacked established trading contacts in the area. Partly, consuls had official diplomatic functions, especially in North Africa. The consular service is conceived as an institutional arrangement reducing transaction costs of Swedish agents. This article suggests that reduction in protection costs in particular was a significant competitive advantage of Swedish merchants and shipowners and was due to peace treaties with the Barbary states in North Africa and Sweden's neutrality in the 18th‐century great power conflicts.     

Microstoria,Pacific History,and the Question of Scale: Two or Three Things That We Should Know About Them

This article is prompted by the recent debate on the so-called crisis in the humanities, and the related call for historians to change direction by returning to history of the longue durée. While pointing out that the ‘crisis’ is more influenced by the changing political economy of the tertiary education sector than by specific historiographical practices, I suggest that small-scale analysis remains compatible with global history approaches. Articulating a parallel examination of Pacific historiography and the Italian variant of microhistory, the article argues that the latter provides fertile stimuli for Pacific history. In particular, I maintain that integrating social analysis can serve to counterbalance the over-emphasis on cultural aspects found in much Pacific historiography.     

Geschichte ohne Kausalität. Abgrenzungsstrategien gegen die Wissenschaftssoziologie in zeitgenössischen Ansätzen historischer Epistemologie

History Without Causality. How Contemporary Historical Epistemology Demarcates Itself From the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Contemporary proponents of historical epistemology often try to delimit their enterprise by demarcating it from the sociology of scientific knowledge and other sociologically oriented approaches in the history of science. Their criticism is directed against the use of causal explanations which are deemed to invite reductionism and lead to a totalizing perspective on science. In the present article I want to analyse this line of criticism in what I consider are two paradigmatic works of contemporary historical epistemology: Lorraine Daston's und Peter Galison's Objectivity and Hans‐Jörg Rheinberger's Toward a History of Epistemic Things. I first present their arguments against the sociological and causal analysis of scientific knowledge and practice and then try to defend sociological work in the history of science against their charges. I will, however, not do so by defending causal explanations directly. Rather, I will show that the arguments against sociological analysis put forward in contemporary historical epistemology, as well as historical epistemology's own models of historical explanation and narration, bear problematic consequences. I argue that Daston, Galison and Rheinberger fail to create productive resonances between macro‐ and microhistorical perspectives, that they reproduce an internalist picture of scientific knowledge, and finally that Rheinberger's attempt to deconstruct the dichotomy between subject and object leads him to neglect questions about the political dimension of scientific research.     

MARGINS AND MONSTERS: HOW SOME MICRO CASES LEAD TO MACRO CLAIMS1

How do micro cases lead us to surprising macro claims? Historians often say that the micro level casts light on the macro level. This metaphor of “casting light” suggests that the micro does not illuminate the macro straightforwardly; such light needs to be interpreted. In this essay, I propose and clarify six interpretive norms to guide micro‐to‐macro inferences. I focus on marginal groups and monsters. These are popular cases in social and cultural histories, and yet seem to be unpromising candidates for generalization. Marginal groups are dismissed by the majority as inferior or ill‐fitting; their lives seem intelligible but negligible. Monsters, on the other hand, are somehow incomprehensible to society and treated as such. First, I show that, by looking at how a society identifies a marginal group and interacts with it, we can draw surprising inferences about that society's self‐image and situation. By making sense of a monster's life, we can draw inferences about its society's mentality and intelligibility. These will contest our conception of a macro claim. Second, I identify four risks in making such inferences — and clarify how norms of coherence, challenge, restraint, connection, provocation, and contextualization can manage those risks. My strategy is to analyze two case studies, by Richard Cobb, about a band of violent bandits and a semi‐literate provincial terrorist in revolutionary France. Published in 1972, these studies show Cobb to be an inventive and idiosyncratic historian, who created new angles for studying the micro level and complicated them with his autobiography. They illustrate how a historian's autobiographical, literary, and historiographical interests can mix into a risky, and often rewarding, style.     

Women and Family Property: A Review of U.S. Inheritance Studies

Historians can use the concept of causation in a variety of ways, each of which is associated with different historiographical claims and different kinds of argumentation. The author shows that, contrary to the usual view, historical narratives are causal (in a specific way), and microhistory can be seen as a response to a very specific causal problem of Braudelian macrohistory.